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Why Meaningful Use?

Most medical offices already understand the consequences of Meaningful Use. As of this writing there are several types of financial penalties that we are subject to. If you are are in health care we are all subjected to 2% “sequestration”. If you are currently in an ambulatory practice you need to worry about Physician Quality Reporting System or PQRS. Non-participation in PQRS means another 2%. Then there is Meaningful Use itself. The idea of Meaningful Use was introduced by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. The current penalty for non-participation in Meaningful Use. This will increase by 1% per year up to a maximum of 7%. It you don’t don’t participate in any of this then you get sequestration 2%, PQRS 2%, and up to a maximum of 7% and your total is 11%.

There are reasons to not participate. The first one is that participating is expensive. Calculation of return on investment usually yields a negative number. One of the biggest factors is the expense of certified software. There are work flow changes that need to be implemented in a practice for successful participation. For small practices the changes are daunting. The first decision then is the ROI every really positive for me as a practitioner?

Another question haunting all of us in primary care what is the federal government going to come up with next? MIPS is now on the horizon. There is already a federal time line to merge the PQRS and Meaningful Use into MIPS. There is increasing pressure to change the way contracting is done and to move to reimbursing physicians based on their quality instead of straight piece work.

We can help you with these government interventions (or intrusions if you prefer the term). Change is always difficult but for my practice is was finding the right software, that was inexpensive and is easy to use. IT expertise so that you don’t have to solve the technical issues. I have solved these problems for my practice so that I am making progress as a business and maintained my independence from the every enlarging hospital systems.